Help America Vote Act

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The Help America Vote Act Public Law 107-252 (HAVA) is a United States federal law passed on October 29, 2002. Under HAVA, a new federal voter registration form was created, which has simplified as well as complicated the registration process. HAVA also guarantees the ability of individuals to cast a provisional ballot and have the validity of their registration checked later if they do not appear on voter registration rolls.

HAVA was drafted (at least in part) in reaction to the dimpled ballots fiasco that accompanied the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Some have questioned its usefulness as it is understood to mandate electronic voting systems; automated systems were the cause of some of the problems at the last election. Others are concerned about the opportunities for vote tampering associated with the fluidity of electronic data.

With the new act, states now have powers that were originally distributed to counties. With this centralization of power comes the new federally mandated computerization of voter rolls. This is particularly troubling to critics of the voter roll cleansing that took place in the Florida election in 2000.

The Country will have to convince the 50 different states in order to allow electronic-voting to succeed. The problem comes when some states decide to vote differently. In the USA there are no uniform set of standards for voting, so in the end, voting still remains a problem because in order to succeed, the Country will have to convince the 50 different states in order to allow electronic-voting to happen.

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Criticisms

Critics of the bill state it is little more than an effort to help large electronic voting systems vendors such as Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, and Sequoia Election Systems make millions of dollars throughout the country in selling electronic voting devices encouraged by HAVA. Template:Ref Template:Ref

The bill has also been come under fire for the fact that the majority of the billions of dollars allocated to the states for HAVA has been for increased access for disabled voters, while the main goal of HAVA, avoiding the problems that plagued the 2000 elections in Florida, has been largely ignored. Template:Ref Template:Ref

The bill also contains some elements that complicate the voter registration process. Section 303(a)(5) of HAVA provides that no state may accept or process a voter registration form for an election for Federal office unless the application includes "in the case of an applicant who has been issued a current and valid driver's license, the applicant's driver's license number." This is actually costing the country millions of dollars more for an election just to process the same basic registration form and comfirm that they meet the HAVA requirements. Template:Ref

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